theEweekly Wrap - Android, Google and Twitter

Apple's iPhone woes continued this week after statistics revealed that Android-based phones pocketed 17.2 per cent of global sales in the second quarter of this year. The news will be discomforting for Apple for a few reasons, but most notably because Android recorded an incredible 15.4 per cent jump from the same figures last year. Apple's iPhone OS meanwhile notched up a 14 per cent share of the market (up one per cent from last year).

"It will be interesting to see how long Apple fans remain in denial about the power of an open versus closed platform strategy," wrote Henry Blodget in the Business Insider.

Meanwhile, things weren't all that rosy for Android and Google as software manufacturer Oracle sued the firm for patent and copyright infringement over the use of Java in the Android OS.

Google image woe

While the redesign of Google image search has received a warm reception from many, SEO blog Search Engine Roundtable highlighted a previously unknown issue.

The site covered a message submitted to the Google Web Search Help from staff at a New Zealand school, complaining that the new design had substantially increased their data usage.

According to the school's administrator, the new-look Google image SERPs had resulted in a 130 per cent increase in bandwidth usage, rising the school's data consumption from 17GB to 39GB in one week.

The message read:

"We have had to shut down our whole network until we can resolve this issue. We are concerned that other schools who do not manage their own networks will have no idea this is happening."

Around the world

It's been a busy week for Twitter and everyone's favourite social network site has rarely been out of the news over the past five days. Aside from announcing a new 'tweet this' button for third-party websites, possibly the biggest news for the site came on Thursday with the news that Twitter usage has grown across the globe.

Indeed, a report for comScore found usage of Twitter.com had increased globally by 109 per cent, compared to the previous year. Usage in Latin America had grown by 305 per cent, while the Asia Pacific region recorded a 243 per cent rise in users.

It's worth pointing out that the survey only registered visitors to the Twitter homepage and did not count mobile usage statistics.